448 ANNUAL, REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1910. 



great self-reliance was a characteristic rarely developed in those 

 whose early years have been free from care. Life was a severe 

 struggle for him, and though his victories were great they were won 

 after hard-fought battles. 



After the departure of his father from Xeuchatel Alexander re- 

 mained with his mother throughout the period of her failing health, 

 and after her death his father's cousin, Dr. Mayor, and the Rev. Marc 

 Fivaz brought him to America, where he rejoined his father in 

 America in June, 1849, and entered the Cambridge high school in the 

 autumn of the same year. 



The earliest published picture of Alexander Agassiz is by his 

 father's artist, Dinkel, and appears upon the cover of the first liv- 

 raison of the " Histoire naturelles des Poissons d'Eau douce de 

 FEurope Centrale," published in 1839. It shows him as a little boy 

 of 4 years fishing upon the shore of the Lake of Xeuchatel. 



In early life Alexander exhibited his independence of character 

 and incurred the Prussian governor's displeasure and his father's 

 reproof through his willful neglect to salute this official when he 

 passed upon the opposite side of the street. He must also have shown 

 his characteristic pertinacity, for before he came to America he could 

 play well upon the violin, an accomplishment which he allowed to 

 fall into abeyance in later years. 



In the spring of 1850, soon after the arrival of Alexander in 

 America, his father took for his second wife Miss Elizabeth C. Gary, 

 of Boston, in whom he found a new mother throughout life, and he 

 took the most tender care of her until her death, long years after- 

 wards, when he himself was an old man. Doubtless many of the finer 

 traits -of his rugged character were developed through the refining 

 influence due to the care and teaching he received from this superior 

 woman. 



Nature and his father made him a naturalist, and his reverence for 

 his father was almost a religion with him. He became the first 

 student his father taught in America. 



He entered Harvard College and graduated in 1855 with the degree 

 of A. B., and then studied engineering, geology, and chemistry in the 

 Lawrence scientific school, obtained one B. S. in 1857 and another in 

 natural history in 1862. During his college days he was much inter- 

 ested in rowing and was bow oar of the four-oared crew which won 

 the race against Yale on the Connecticut River at Springfield on July 

 22, 1855, at which time he weighed only 145 pounds. He continued 

 to row on the university crew until 1858, when the future President 

 Eliot was one of his comrades in the boat. 



After graduating from the Lawrence scientific school he studied 

 chemistry for a few months at Harvard, and then taught in his 

 father's school for young ladies until 1859, when he was appointed 



